By This video truly looks like a magic trick: watch him dunk a tissue in water, pull it out, and have the tissue be absolutely 100% dry. Now take that concept, apply the same special coating to your phone , and you’ll have a lot of happy campers. It will still be painfully obnoxious to retrieve your phone after dropping it in the toilet, but at least under these circumstances, you’ll have a working gadget and not a waterlogged brick.
The company behind this technology is called Liquipel and they weren’t alone at ShowStoppers where this demo took place. At least two other companies with near identical displays and demos were sharing their wares too. Regardless which company provides the services, this is something OEMs and carriers need to get on board with: waterproofing should come standard on the vast majority of smartphone models.
Right now, Liquipel is only offered on about 10 devices including Android Phones like the Samsung Droid Charge, but they’re adding new models to their lineup every day. Simply pay $59, ship your phone to Liquitel, they put it through their special machines that apply the waterproof coating, and ship you back your new impermeable pocket machine.
With so many phones breaking each year due to water damage – whether that means spilling your spiced pumpkin latte all over it, getting pushed in a pool fully clothed, or simply running to your car in the rain – I’m guessing carriers and manufacturers make a LOT of money each year from consumer clumsiness. Liquitel and waterproofing in general is a no-brainer for the consumer and $59 is peas in comparison to how much trouble and money it will save you. Right now, the main concern for consumers is parting with their prized possession while Liquipel works their wonders. From what I heard, it takes about a week to send, apply the coating, and get your device back. I’d suggest doing this RIGHT when you buy a phone but BEFORE you switch over to using it.
If Liquipel had retail stores or a service like this was offered inside a store like BestBuy, would you use it? How about if it was a drop-off today and pickup tomorrow kind of thing- would you be more inclined?
You mean Liquipel?… lolz
Liquipel. Not Liquitel. #corrections
Thanks for liquitelling me I made a mistake. #corrected
one more,
“Simply pay $59, ship your phone to Liquitel,”
i keep hearing people do the same thing with nail polish. i’d like to see a side-by-side comparison of a nail polished & liquipel phone after a water-dunk.
I want to know is if this somehow voids my warranty…I’d love to be able to feel safe with spills, rain, and sinks, but I have bad hardware luck and my phones die from other things. I’ve never actually had a water problem, but all sorts of other issues have come up.
I wonder if I can just drive down the road and drop off my phone. I should probably e-mail them.
seeing as how they would have to open up the device to coat the internals and they are not the device manufacturer nor your carrier. I would have to say that this does infact void your warrenty.
Does not void the warranty. The process of the waterproofing is by placing the device in a chamber with nano particle fog. It permeates all parts of the device, even the water indicators. Water damage will not be possible unless soaked for a long time, the water indicators will also remain the same, unchanged.
I’ve already talked to them.
1. It does not void your warranty.
2. If you live close, you can just drive to them with your phone.
They’re in Santa Ana, that’s 560 miles south of me, no thanks :D
If Best buy had this I would use it!
I pay less than £59 per year for insurance and if I did drop my phone in the toilet I would get a shiny new phone!
This would end up costing me more in new phones than anything. I end up with too many hardware issues (dead display, dead pixels, dead portions of screen) that by the time all was said and done I’d be out a few hundred bucks and a few weeks for each device to have this. This should come with the phones to begin with :)
I live near salt lake city, and I just saw an add for a buisness doing this. Drop it off and an hour later they hand You your device submerged in water. ????
Um, yeah I would use this! Even if it meant not having a phone for a day or two. I don’t think I’d send it to them and have a week without my phone but if Best Buy offered something like this, or if they had retail stores, I’d jump on it. 60 bucks is a hell of a lot cheaper than the $100 deductible Verizon charges, and that’s not even including the monthly cost for insurance…
I would think about it if I had a new phone. There’s no point in waterproofing a phone that’s already a few months old, this thing had a lot is chipping thing on on the top because I had forgotten to keep change out of the same pocket
I think the price point is too high for wide adoption of this. Phone insurance is already of questionable value considering the cost of the insurance, the deductible, and the actual cost of a replacement device. Since Liquipel doesn’t eliminate the need for insurance, it would just be an additional cost.
Sending your shiny new device to Liquipel pre-activation would avoid the down time, at the risk of losing that protection as a result of a warranty replacement, which seems to happen a lot with new devices, regardless of the manufacturer. Waiting until you’re satisfied that your device is not defective, or that you’re not exchanging it for a different model during a “worry free” period to apply the coating would then leave you with down time, or having to revert to your older device temporarily.
Potential Liquipel end-user customers would obviously be aware of the prospect of down time associated with having the coating applied. However, I don’t think most would consider the issue of warranty replacement either leaving their device naked, or leaving them with another $59 charge AND the down time that comes with having the coating applied to a currently-in-use device.
Once consumers realize the issues associated with having the coating applied to their device post-purchase, I think its appeal in this market will disappear, and that Liquipel will be something that is applied on select device models at the manufacturing stage only.
How does it keep water from getting into your device via the headphone jack/usb port? It seems that the manufacturer would need to make those watertight first.
I don’t think you understand how it works.
I think it’d be better if they could work with Best Buy or other retail outlets to have a couple devices of each model already waterproofed, so it could just be a choice when you buy it.
It’s interesting that three companies have the exact product. This must mean that whoever invented it just licensed it out. I wonder if the barrier to entry is pretty small.
I’ve emailed them twice now asking if it’d work on a few phones.
No response both times. Not sure how I feel about the company when they won’t even respond to a simple email. Wish they would respond lol really want their services.
Maybe on my next device. I already put my HTC Amaze in the washer and dryer and it works fine, it doesn’t need water proofing. Haha